Regulation of Communications Markets

Retail Tariff Regulation

The regulation of retail tariffs is a key feature of a liberalised market and entails the prescription of guidelines on how to determine retail charges. The aims of this are several fold, but with two overriding objectives – the wish to ensure that key services remain affordable to all sections of society, and the need to guard against larger and more powerful operators manipulating pricing structures in an anti-competitive fashion.

InterConnect Communications can assist in the development of an effective retail tariff regime and has considerable experience and expertise in this area. In particular, we can assist with:

Reviewing existing tariff policy and guidelines;
Development and drafting of new policies and resultant legislation;
Recommending appropriate tariff controls;
Determining which operators and services should be subject to tariff controls;
Development of baskets for services subject to tariff control as part of an RPI-X formula;
Determining price cap values and any sub-cap values to enable tariff rebalancing to take place with the price cap control mechanism.

We can further support these services with the provision of costing models to assist in ongoing tariff analysis, and the undertaking of benchmarking studies to identify relevant comparators and illustrate international best practice.

Past assignments include:

Performing a survey of current pricing approaches for a South-East Asian regulator and, on the basis of this, developing a recommended model consistent with international best practice to determine appropriate cost-based retail tariffs for regulated services;
Developing a tariff regime and price regulation policy for a Middle Eastern regulatory authority. This work included provision of an overview of principles of setting tariffs and tariff rebalancing, undertaking a review of current customer tariffs for fixed and mobile services, studying the impact on tariffs of Quality of Service, universal service and monopoly provider issues, and suggesting an outline proposal for tariff rebalancing of network services;
Producing a report and accompanying workshop for a Central European government, covering tariff control issues and their relevance to privatisation initiatives.

Key Service Areas:

Costs & Tariffs

More Information?

For more information about InterConnect's retail tariff services, please contact Eric Tyson by phone on +44 (0) 1291 638400.